


Aletheia

by ExpatGirl



Series: Team Free Will and the Mississippi Succubus Adventure [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blow Jobs, First Time, Fun and Games, It's all fun and games until someone spills a love confession, M/M, Post-Darkness (Supernatural), Post-Season/Series 11, Sexual Content, Well First Time Together You Know What I Mean, yay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 21:01:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6345013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/pseuds/ExpatGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The aftermath of the succubus case in Mississippi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aletheia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BurningTea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/gifts).



> This follows immediately after "[Veritas](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6180187)".

Dean expected Cas to jump on him the moment Sam closed the door. Cas wasn’t known for hesitancy or his skill at de-escalation, and if ever there was a moment Dean wanted to escalate, this was it. He grinned a little as Cas’ words sank in. “Well, good,” he said, leaning against the desk. “Lying’s a sin.”

  
“From an angelic perspective, pretty much everything I’ve done in the last eight years is a sin.” Cas stayed where he was, a few feet away, feeling suddenly unmoored. Had Dean been this drunk a few minutes ago? He seemed drunker than when they left the bar, though, Cas admitted, this probably had more to do with his own rapidly-sobering state than with Dean. Conflicting feelings began to scratch their way into him. He wished desperately for a minibar. Dean had retreated from him in a brief, frigid moment of misunderstanding, and he’d made no move to close the distance again, even after Sam left the room.

 

Dean, for his part, regretted  the distance, as he usually did when he made himself move away from Cas. Still, it did mean that _he_ could be the one being pounced on this time, which was a damn fine thought to have. He tried to make himself an appealing target. “You sure know how to sweet-talk a guy.” He leaned back a little more and tried on his most winning smile. “Why not add a few more to the list?”

Why the hell was Cas still standing there? Fuck, Dean practically had _Hello, Sailor_ in blinking neon lights above his head. Why was Cas staring at him like Dean was suddenly going to evaporate in a puff of smoke?

“Dean, you’re drunk.”

“What else is new?” Dean asked, before he could stop himself. Then something _clicked_ , so loudly he was surprised it didn’t echo around the room. “Hey, wait. Dude, are you...man, I appreciate the chivalry, but _trust_ me, my blood alcohol level has nothing to do with it.”

Cas looked at him uncertainly and god damn it, uncertainty was one of the few things in Creation that didn’t look good on him. Time to nip this in the bud right now.

“Cas, can you read minds?”

 

“Um, after a fashion,” Cas said, wrong-footed.

 

“Wait, _what_? Seriously?” Dean said, also wrong-footed. He had the distinct impression that they were both going to fall down in a moment if they weren’t careful. “You mean like dream walking?”

 

Cas furrowed his brow, confused. So often he forgot that Dean, whom he held closer to his heart than his own self, didn’t already know these things. “No, I mean..I can feel emotions that are aimed at me. Like, uh, longing for instance. Or, well, any emotion or...or intention, as long as I’m the recipient. It’s like a prayer only less…less formal, I suppose.”

Dean felt his heart drop somewhere in the vicinity of his stomach, remembering those times when his intentions had been less than kind, then promptly leap back throatward as he caught on Cas’ word choice. “Seriously? You can...you can feel _longing_?”

 “If it’s directed at me, yes.”

 

Then Dean did something unexpected: he laughed. It sounded as though it had been startled out of him. He folded down in a sort of helpless, mirthful bow, as he’d done once, years ago outside of a seedy brothel. Cas found himself smiling a little, purely out of reflex. Dean often had sudden and strange turns in his emotions, following a flightpath Cas could neither see nor hope to replicate.

 

“Oh, man,” Dean said, wiping his eyes. He pushed himself away from the desk, taking two very deliberate steps into Cas’ space. Cas looked like he was torn between leaning closer and bolting. Dean was starting to realize that this had probably been Cas’ default state for a while now. Probably since they’d met. (Well, he could relate.) “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Not in the slightest.”

“You can feel when somebody’s longing for you and you really thought I was _pretending_ just now?”

 

The remaining alcohol in Cas’ system seemed to burn away as Dean stood there smiling at him. It was a different kind of smile than the one he’d been wearing a moment ago, one Cas had only seen a handful of times: under a cold winter streetlamp; by the banks of a river that offered no forgetfulness, no matter how much Cas drank; in a bland motel on the outskirts of Rexford, as Dean helped him change into a clean shirt. “I…that was _you_?”

“Hell yes,” Dean said, sliding his hands across Cas’ chest and lingering over the delirious staccato of his heartbeat. It sped up beneath the weight of his hand and oh, wasn’t _that_ interesting. “Who'd you think it was?” He slipped one button from its eyelet, sly and nonchalant.

 

“Me,” Cas said. Something in him seemed to slide into place, or rather, to slide out of the way, so suddenly and so definitively that he felt his breath punch out of him. _There_ it was. Had it always been there?

“Huh?”

“Dean, I...I thought those were my feelings for you. I mean, those _are_ my feelings for you. All this time, I thought...” Language seemed to flee from him. He was reduced to soundlessness, shaking his head.

 

Dean had another two buttons undone. “You mean you couldn’t tell the difference?” He frowned down at the next button, trying to figure out why this bothered him.

 

“You have to understand. In Heaven, what we were allowed to feel, and how we were allowed to express it, was very...limited. And straightforward. I still can’t name most of the emotions I feel now. All I know is that there are a lot of them, and many of them have to do with you.” Dean made a small sound of amusement, and Castiel was suddenly struck by the stark disparity in their levels of undress, for the second time this evening. He shrugged himself out of his shirt and then caught Dean’s hands before they moved to his belt buckle. He worked the knot on Dean’s tie free, catching his eye as he did so, remembering the strange, obscure thrill it sent through him when Dean had done the same. Something in Dean’s expression shifted, wide-open and halted. Cas stopped himself, fingertips resting just below the hollow of Dean’s clavicle. Had he misjudged? He so often found himself crossing boundaries he didn’t even know existed. He opened his mouth to apologize; but then Dean lifted his chin, just a little.

(The old ones, Castiel remembered, sometimes made offerings to angels: burnt offerings, offerings of gold and rare spices, and he had never, not once, been tempted to accept one. Until now.) Cas slid the first button free, slowly, and the next, and the next, until they were all undone, without daring to take his eyes off of Dean’s face.

 _Skin_ , he thought, made fervent and ineloquent by the need to touch. He remembered this, kind of, from his experience with April, the sudden covetousness of his fingers, his mouth, his whole body. But it felt different with Dean, more urgent and all-consuming, in ways he couldn’t quite conceptualize, and so didn’t try to. The anti-possession tattoo on Dean’s chest seemed all at once to develop its own center of gravity. He’d rebuilt Dean’s body from bones and a bit of ragged sinew, fashioning him, almost literally, from a rib--Eve was Adam was Dean. Ostensibly, Castiel knew it even better than Dean did himself, but suddenly it seemed as though he’d never seen it before in his life, and all he wanted to do was learn it, its planes and angles and edges, every part.

And yet...something in him constricted, snake-like, stealing his breath. He felt a great presence pouring itself down on him. He pressed his hand against Dean’s sternum, right above the heart, and averted his eyes. “Now what?”

 

Dean smiled again, feeling the warmth spreading out from Cas’ fingertips into his skin. _Christ,_  he thought, _he’s following my lead, note-for-note_. Cas wasn’t innocent, Dean knew, not by a long shot, but he _was_ guileless. In this especially. He had hundreds of thousands of years of observation to draw from, probably seen things that Dean could barely fathom, let alone _do_. But when it came down to the flesh-and-blood reality of it, all Cas had to go on was one kiss from a demon, half an hour of porn, and a fake marriage to a woman who’d never even tried to get to second base (yeah, he’d asked; subtlety was for other people). And...and a creature that hid behind the face of a kind stranger and then murdered him.

Dean was suddenly seized by the need to grab and kiss and _hold_. So he did, gripping Cas’ shoulder and then sliding his hand up until it rested against his throat, gentle, and brushed his thumb against the angle of Cas’ jaw. “Now,” he said softly, once he was sure he had Cas’ attention fully on him, “we figure it out. What do you want?”

Cas glanced away again, but this time it wasn’t out of uncertainty. Dean could practically _see_ him flipping through his Catalogue of Adventures in Human Sex, and felt a small surge of panic. He was totally on board with learning firsthand what kinds of kinky shit the ancient Sumerians had gotten up to, of course, but today was probably _not_ the day for that kind of history lesson. Besides, that didn’t tell him what Cas _wanted._ Then again, maybe Cas himself didn’t know.

“Hey, this ain’t a test. Don’t be afraid. You know what, why don’t we just start with kissing?” Dean asked. That was safe, and he was also pretty sure that fell firmly in the ‘yes’ column on the list of things Cas liked. “That okay with you?”

 

More than okay. Miles and fathoms more than okay. But Cas was tired of talking. On earth, in every language, everything he said was slant, and he was creature built for directness. So he tried the direct route. He spared enough breath to say “Good idea,” and then caught Dean’s mouth with his own. This, at least, was something he knew, the rush and push of it familiar territory in a foreign land. He curled his fingers around the back of Dean’s neck and changed the angle of their meeting. He dared to dart his tongue in, inquisitive, and was rewarded with a shiver. So, sensitive, then.

“Good?” Cas asked, because he wanted to know.

“Yeah, um. Good, yeah. You uh...you didn’t do that last time.” Dean gasped, pulling away slightly. In fairness, Cas thought, he didn’t do much of _anything_ last time except make appreciative noises and try to keep  his hands to himself, believing that Dean’s advances were all business and no pleasure. Just one of the many illusions he’d labored under during his long life.

“Let me guess, the pizza man?”

“Not him, no,” Cas said, against the side of Dean’s mouth. Dean’s answering laugh was short and laced with a kind of giddy madness that Castiel could feel fizzing under his own skin, as though they were trading back and forth, a feedback loop of effervescence. The alcohol left his system long ago but Cas was drunk on proximity and possibility. He leaned into Dean for support.

 

“Hey, I’m not complaining.” Dean kept one hand running lightly from Cas’ head to the small of his back, undemanding but sure. He turned his attention to Cas’ neck. The mark he’d left earlier was gone, but he didn’t mind its loss; they’d left enough unasked-for marks on each other for one lifetime. Now they could work on asking. There were lessons here, both to teach and to undo. But there was also a lot of fun to be had. With this in mind, he slid his other hand back to Cas’ belt buckle.

“So,” Dean said, pressing the words into the curve of Cas’ ear, and feeling each word leave goosebumps in its wake, “how does this feel? With your grace and everything, I mean?” It might have been a bad move, but he felt light and reckless and full of pleasurable things he’d almost forgotten he could feel.

 

“Uh,” Cas said, dazed. He let himself be maneuvered backwards toward the bed, dimly took in the bright buzz of his zipper being pulled down. “I don’t know. Anything I feel, I feel because I want to.”

Dean stayed his hand, one finger on the edge of Cas’ waistband. His voice sounded odd when he asked: “What? You can...turn it off and on?”

Dean seemed to have forgotten what he was doing, so Cas helpfully stepped back and let gravity bring his trousers the rest of the way to the floor. Gravity was occasionally a useful thing, he conceded. “No,” Cas said, giving in to the urge that had been simmering in the back of his mind for the last twenty minutes or so and kissing the points of Dean’s tattoo, before dipping his head further and dragging his tongue-tip across the nipple below it. Above him there was a gasp. Interesting, everything was _so_ _interesting_.

He rubbed his cheek across the wet line he’d left. He was rewarded with another small but pleasing noise, smiling a little at the way Dean’s arm instinctively tightened. So, also sensitive. Good to know. “It’s not a light switch,” he said, returning to Dean’s question. “I simply choose how to channel the physical inputs. Grace or flesh. Feel it, or don’t feel it.” He looked back up again, gratified at both the rising color in Dean’s face and the hard line of his erection where it settled against Cas’ hip. So many signals, it was hard to know which one to prioritize. Might as well treat them all as important until he got more feedback. “It helps that I know _how_ to feel things now, of course.” This time his smile was wry. Dean’s eyes were veiled, love-haze clouded, or confused, or both. Either way, his words didn’t land, and so Cas decided a practical demonstration was in order. He withdrew from the corporeal world and sent his grace out. Perhaps it didn’t flow as quickly as used to, and there were parts where nothing but jagged static remained, sawtoothed pulses of null space where once it had all been holy, holy, holy, hallelujah. But it was what he had, and so it was what he’d give, and hope that Dean didn’t mind the broken places. The firetrails on his human skin were immediately extinguished. “Here,” he said, taking Dean’s hand and sliding it down the plane of his own stomach, then wrapping their entwined fingers around his cock.

 

Nothing happened. Well, not _nothing_ , because Dean made an inarticulate sound and squeezed on reflex. But Cas just looked at him with a patient, slightly resigned expression on his face, like he was waiting for Dean to catch up. Dean had seen that look more times than he could count.

“See?” Cas asked.

“Uh,” Dean said in an unconscious echo of Cas, because English was apparently not something he spoke anymore. He looked back down, tightened his fingers again, and moved his hand experimentally. No response. He did it again, more firmly this time. Again, nothing. Narrowing his eyes impatiently, he yanked Cas’ boxer shorts down, then licked his palm and tried again, this time adding a twist on the upstroke that would win the blue ribbon at any county fair. Well, any county fair with a handjob competition. Not that Dean had ever fantasized about...He shook his head, focusing on the task--he smirked a little--at hand. Eventually he had to admit defeat. “Well, damn.”

“Yeah,” Cas said, catching Dean’s wrist and holding him still. He stepped free of the last of his clothes. “Okay, now…” He heard Cas let out a shaky breath. “Now try again.”

One thing Dean could do, when motivated, was follow directions. Precisely, diligently, hell, enthusiastically, even. He realized, somewhat belatedly, that Cas had never actually seen any proof of this. Dean was always the immovable object to Cas’ unstoppable force. Well. Time to move.

“Okay,” Dean said. “Right.”  Slowly, because Dean could be exceptionally mean when he was being nice. And, he reminded himself, this was quite possibly only the second time Cas had experienced this. ( _Might even be the first_ , Dean thought with a low flame of satisfaction in his belly.)

Cas’ whole body jerked like he’d received a blow, and he grabbed Dean’s shoulder just a little too hard.

“Woah, man, I barely touched you,” Dean said, both delighted and incredulous.

“Yeah, well,” Cas said. He sounded thoroughly wrecked already.

Dean waited for him to finish this sentence, but that seemed to be it. “Well?”

“Well, I don’t actually channel very much through my ves--my body, so when I do it’s…”

“Intense?” It was slowly dawning on Dean exactly what he was doing and exactly who he was doing it with, and his usual modes of operation seemed to fail him. The programs just wouldn’t load. He felt something in him rattle slightly, a piece that he normally held firmly in place and tried not to think about; now it was threatening to come loose and bring the whole thing down. He had half a mind to let it.

“Very much so.” Dean slid his hand down and back up a second time and felt Cas shudder. “But mostly it’s because it’s _you_.”

The troublesome fragment finally broke out of his grasp. He made a strangled sort of sound and dropped his forehead to Cas’ bare shoulder.

 

“I said something wrong.” Were those tears? Those felt like tears. Castiel was almost positive there weren’t supposed to be tears in this kind of situation, not usually.

He felt Dean shake his head slightly. “No,” Dean said. His voice sounded rough. “You didn’t say anything wrong, Cas.” Dean turned his head, into the crook of Cas’ neck and began kissing him again. He expected force, and teeth, the bloodbloom of capillaries giving way to the onslaught of his mouth, as before. But this was much gentler. A prayer whispered up inside of his mind, wordless and urgent, and he might not have had names for all of the emotions he’d felt--naming things wasn’t within an angel’s remit, after all--but this one. This one he knew. This one couldn’t be killed, not in a thousand identical guises, this one...

“Me too,” Cas said. “Dean, me too.”

Suddenly Dean was looking at his face, intense to the point of pain, and dove in for another kiss. Cas felt Dean’s other hand, which had been splayed across Cas’ lower back, move upward so that Dean could wrap his arm around Cas’ shoulder and pull them close together.

“That’s…” Dean said, then kissed him again. “That’s good.” He gave what was probably meant to be a cocky smile, but Cas could see something else underneath it, something bright and glinting and very, very new.

For no apparent reason, Castiel was reminded of the moment where he’d released Dean’s soul (gold-white shot through with blue-white in all the places that had been black, still smelling faintly of smoke) into his newly-minted body, six feet under the scorched earth and said: “Don’t be afraid. It’s just a test. If you don’t make it, we’ll start again, you and I.” Of course, Dean had forgotten the instant he drew in his first breath, but Castiel never had.

He staggered a little, and the backs of his legs hit the edge of the bed.

Dean’s smile grew broader. “Good idea.”

“What? What’s…”  Before he could finish the thought, he found himself sitting on the bed, with Dean kneeling. He blinked, wondering how that had happened, and why Dean wasn’t touching him any more. “You let go.”

 

“New plan,” Dean said, sliding his hands up Cas’ legs and nudging his knees open a little more. “Slightly more...involved plan, and, uh..” He cleared his throat, realizing the size of the task he’d just set himself. “And one I haven’t tried in a few years, so…”

Cas just looked at him, dark-eyed and intent, but the innuendo wasn’t hitting. Dean sighed, ran his thumb across the inside of Cas’ thigh and was pleased to see the muscles there twitch. “Blow jobs, dude. I’m talking about a blow job.”

There was a sharp intake of breath, then something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

“Pro-tip,” Dean said, and turned his head to bite lightly at the skin where his thumb had been. Cas made a surprised noise.  “Don’t laugh at the guy who’s offering to go down on you.”

But Cas just laughed again, low enough that it went straight through Dean and made his stomach twist. “Trust me, I wasn’t laughing at you,” Cas said, running his fingers through Dean’s hair. “I was laughing at…” Dean tried an exploratory flick of his tongue. “Never mind,” Cas said. “I’ll tell you later. Please, continue with your…” Dean did it again, more boldly this time. “Um, continue with your plan.”

Dean looked up through his lashes, knowing that this particular angle did a lot of favors. “You gonna talk the whole time?”

“Uh…”

“Because I wouldn't mind.”

“That’s good, because I don’t think I could stop talking if my life depended on it.”

Cas was now supporting himself with one arm behind him, his fingers twisted in the sheets, but his other hand still rested on Dean’s head, idly moving back and forth. Dean wondered, as he took Cas in his mouth for the first time, just a little, if Cas would be the sort to go straight for the grab-and-pull, and prepared himself for the telltale little starbursts of pleasure-pain along his scalp. But none came. Castiel’s hand stayed quiet and warm, reassuring, almost a benediction, and wasn’t _that_ an arresting thought. Images of confessionals and chrism and inappropriate uses for prayer beads filtered through his mind. And suddenly, Dean desperately needed to undo his own pants. He fumbled with one hand and sighed in relief.

“Then again,” Dean said, kissing the delicate skin along Cas’ hip. “I bet I can get you to shut up.”

 

That jarred, sudden as a banishing sigil. His grace shuddered outward. “If you want me to be quiet, I will.”

This didn’t fit with most of Castiel’s knowledge. The participants in the pornographic films he’d seen usually spoke at great length to their partners, narrating what was happening in a way that didn’t seem strictly necessary. He himself had never managed to keep his mouth shut during his own disastrous evening, not any of the three times, but most of that had been in languages no one spoke any more. And Dean had said he didn’t mind. Still, Dean knew things that he didn’t. He had to bear that in mind, and adjust accordingly.

“What? No,” Dean said, moving away slightly to look at him. “This is...it’s a thing humans do. When they want something. When they want someone to do something.”

“Like lying.”

“Yeah, like that only, not. It’s like a...a, um, challenge or a…”

  
“A game.” Cas looked down at him then. “You’re suggesting a game.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, throat dry. “That’s what I’m suggesting.”

“Human beings and their games.” Cas smiled, a razor-edged thing. "If only you knew." There was something wolfish and wily in his look and Dean felt a shudder down his spine. Jesus Christ, he wasn’t even going to last five minutes at this rate. Hell, he wasn’t even going to get a _hand_ down his pants at this rate. He ran his cheek along the inside of Cas’ thigh and tried, unsuccessfully, to gather his thoughts. “Alright,” Cas said, pinning him in place with his gaze. “Please, continue. Though,” he said, closing his eyes and drawing in a breath. “I can’t promise it’ll all be English.”

“Fair enough,” Dean said, and set to work. He used tricks he hadn’t tried in years, moving glacially slow, hot and lavish against Cas’ skin, letting the ragged banner of Cas’ voice unfold above him in what had to be a dozen languages. More than once, Dean heard his own name in between trembling breaths and sighs. This only drove him on further. He relaxed his throat and made himself take everything Cas could give him.

And then, after several long moments of one sided conversation, a heavy silence fell. Dean looked up to see Cas’ head fall back and his body bow like he’d touched a live wire. And yet his hand in Dean’s hair stayed sweet and still (he’d have to mention that) as he felt Cas’ whole body jolt as he came, finally, finally struck silent. There was a faint electric tingle on his tongue as he swallowed, a mouth full of starlight.

Dean stroked Cas’ thighs softly as he came down, and eventually pulled off, careful, once he was sure he had it all. He wiped his mouth and smiled. Cas’ chest was still heaving, and there was a slightly unfocused expression on his face. He bit back the desire to say something smart.

 

“Well,” Cas said, after a moment, feeling the reverberations still echo through fingers, toes, wings. It hadn’t been like that before. Similar, but not the same, the sugar-sweet rush of endorphins and oxytocin coupling with the wavelengths of his grace. He felt a strange unfurling. Those raw blank spaces he’d felt for years suddenly seemed smoother. There was a white gold filament running through him that he was certain hadn’t been there an hour ago. “Guess you won that one.”

 

Dean grinned outright. “Guess so.”

His knees were going to kill him in the morning, but he was also pretty sure that when he finally fucking managed to come, that would kill him sooner, so his knees didn’t really matter. “A for effort, though.” He stood, unsteady, and suddenly Cas had switched their positions, manhandling him onto the bed with the kind of intent that could only be described as celestial.

“The rules of war maintain that the victor gets the benefit of his victory. I assume that’s customary in this situation as well.”

“It’s not…” _that kind of game_ , Dean was going to say, but Cas had somehow managed to work Dean’s pants and boxers off and all at once it was very much that kind of game.

“Now, I’d appreciate your feedback here,” Cas said, kissing his way down the restless line of Dean’s flank.

“Woah, buddy, crawl before you run,” Dean said, placing his hand on Cas’ chest.

Cas pulled back a little, canted his head to the side for a moment, and then smiled another sharp smile. “Is that part of the game? Okay.” He slid down, hands-and-knees, and moved his way towards Dean, maintaining eye contact the whole time. He grabbed Dean’s foot, kissing his ankle, his calf, his knee, his soul.

Dean was distantly glad that he’d won, because he found himself incapable of speech almost instantly.

****

Later, in the hour just before dawn,  they moved to the second room. They twined around each other in the artificial chill of the motel, and Dean fell asleep to the feel of Cas’ hand on his hip, the ghost of his breath against his collarbone, the echo of his heartbeat under his fingers.

“Hey,” Dean murmured, just before he went under.

“Mm?”

“In the morning, you can drive.”

Cas kissed the top of his head. “Alright.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm currently freezing my ass off in rural Spain. I've been trying to write this for DAYS, but I've only managed to steal five minutes at a time every few hours. So please, if there are any glaring typos let me know.


End file.
